August 22, 2013

August 21, 2013

l'Optimisme

It's 11:43 PM. In a bit more than six hours, I'll find myself facing up in bed, eyes rolled into my head while my alarm clock not so gently reminds me that I have to leave my cocoon of warmth for another day of routine. 

Except this day, it will be different. I would call it neither the beginning, nor the end. It's my last first day of school. Or at least from what I see in the near future. While I used to view these days with apprehension, I'm nothing but eager to begin what will be a Thursday filled with six hours of classes. 

I have nothing but cautious optimism. 

Bring it on, Monsieur le Futur



Enjoyin' some Shakespeare on the Square.

July 30, 2013

From here to there

It’s summer in Knoxville and it’s hot. One step outside of air-conditioned comfort leaves your breath a bit stifled and those sticky droplets of “flesh goo” on your nape. Of course, as a Knoxvillian or as any resident living in the southeastern United States, you are entitled to say: “It’s just the humidity. If it weren’t for that, this weather would be bearable.” For artistic effect à la southerner, you could throw in a few “derns” and “bloomings” whose usage would pinpoint your upbringing to this bloomin’ humid region.

Oddly enough, I do not have the fortune to call East Tennessee my hometown in the sense that I was raised here. The first fourteen years of my life were spent mostly two modest hours away in glorious suburban Murfreesboro, near Nashville. To my disbelief, I will shortly be marking off nine years since my arrival in the city whose claim to fame is the invention of Mountain Dew, the 1982 World’s Fair, and Johnny Knoxville.

Still, I manage to get asked constantly where I’m from as though I have an exotic foreign accent. Almost flattered, yet cheeks burning, I naturally reply that I’m from Knoxville. Culturally, I identify more with this city than the town of my earlier years. I think it’s because I subconsciously associate Middle Tennessee with the awkwardness of middle school. Plus, as a stubborn liberal who admits he is tiring of trying to effectuate change from within, the farther northeast I am geographically, the better. 

In the idealism of my mind, I’m either a resident of Manhattan or maybe even a French Canadian although these fantasies have yet to manifest in my behavior probably much to zhe relief of zhe people active in my life.